IT’S Thursday morning and the Redbridge School bus is making its way through the Millbrook estate, but there are no pupils on board it.

Yet.

At the wheel is no-nonsense head Jason Ashley, with him is assistant head Sarah Lewis who is studying the ‘hit list’.

On it are the names of the half a dozen students who have not made it into school today, so the school is coming to get them.

It is this direct approach that is at the sharp end of the battle to raise attendance and subsequently attainment in Southampton’s schools.

The latest figures show the city is improving in reducing the number of ‘unauthorised absences’.

Yet the gap between the city’s progress and the national average remains the same as Southampton continues to find itself well behind the country in attendance rates.

A fresh plan is being drawn up by city bosses after those in charge of education in the city admitted more needs to be done.

At Redbridge they have been making their own in roads. There has been no overnight success story but their concentrated approach has seen attendance rates rise steadily from 92 per cent from when they first started using the bus two years ago, to a recent high of 96 per cent.

The truancy patrols are combined with a host of other tools including one-to-one with students, family involvement, working with their feeder primary schools to nip the problem in the bud and sometimes local authority intervention. Where necessary penalty notices are issued.

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At the end of last term around seven families were prosecuted as a very last resort.

“We were talking one day about what more could be done,” says Miss Lewis, “and I said short of knocking on their door and dragging them into school we can’t do anything else. So we nodded our heads and said lets do that then.”

Since then the truancy bus has been a regular sight around the estates in the morning. So much so that at our first stop we are greeted by a mum who, familiar with the routine, says: “You can’t be coming to my house, I know they’re in today.”

There is no answer from the first house we visit, which is not uncommon. “It’s quite often not that day we will see the difference but in the days after. They don’t want us turning up on their doorstep each and every day, but they know we will so they tend to make an effort after we have visited,”

says Mr Ashley.

In truth there is no ‘dragging’ involved, the teachers of course do not have the powers to physically frog-march them into class.

Redbridge Community School head Jason Ashley and Assistant head and attendance leader Sarah Lewis out on patrol in the school’s attendance bus visiting the homes of pupils who have not turned up at school But what they can do is stand face-to-face on the doorstep with parents and ask them to explain why they haven’t been able to ensure their child gets to school.

“We have literally got them out of bed before.

When we started the bus we picked a group up from McDonalds. Noone quite knew what to make of it but they know that we can and we will do this now,” says Miss Lewis.

The crackdown has seen the list of persistent offenders reduce from two sides of A4 to barely one.

These quite clearly are not the families who want to spend a couple of weeks on a cut price holiday in the Med during term time These are the families who for whatever reason do not buy into school, who lack ambition to apply themselves to succeed and maybe dream of something other than a zero-hours contract.

Miss Lewis said: “For us, and most schools, the impact we feel most is from the absences where the parents are complicit it in it. That is the culture and cycle we need to change.”

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Mr Ashley agrees: “For many it isn’t a poverty of the purse but a poverty of aspiration. There isn’t anyone saying you need to go to school to achieve and have opportunities open to you, so we have to do that.”

The battle is no where better illustrated than on our fifth door knock where we are greeted by a teenager who is flatly refusing to come in because she claims not to be well enough.

Her fully made up face and hair in an oversized top knot combined with her ability to have gotten dressed into something other than her uniform, would cast significant doubt on that claim.

A ten-minute exchange of views then ensues with the youngster adamant she cant make it into school today.

The upshot was she would be given an hour to go to a relative’s house where her uniform was bizarrely kept and once in school would be given a separate room to study in if that made her more comfortable.

“I’ll even throw in a bag of Maltesers for you at break time.

It’s the best deal you are going to get,” says Mr Ashley as she grudgingly shuts the door